I recently received a question about posting job advertisements on a tight budget. The question and my response are below.

“Are there any free websites and online job boards where I can post vacant positions for free? I have been tasked with conducting a nationwide job search on a shoestring budget.”

My Response:

With a budget of “cheap to free” you are not going to find a lot of sources with huge nationwide networks and audiences. Any business with a nationwide network or audience is not going to give away the milk when they can sell you the cow so to speak. That being said there are many ways around your issue.

There are many free job posting sites or networks, but most are locally or industry focused. For free sites you might checkout PDXMindshare, Joblab and Portland Creative List. However they many of these examples are for marketing, digital, design and interactive jobs in the Portland metro area. State employment departments will also post jobs for free. Sometimes applicant tracking systems (see below) and employment department postings will be picked up and syndicated by the big paid job sites. Veterans services and disability advocacy organizations will also often post jobs for free.

If you are willing to pay to post on Linked-In you can syndicate your posting onto all the groups you are a part of. You might be able to do this without paying by posting positions to groups, but it would be time intensive if even possible. Craigslist is super cheap and even free in some areas such as the Oregon Coast for example. Of course bigger population center postings will cost more.

Twitter and social media might be a really good option for you too. Just research which tags might work for your position and company. #PDXJobs, career(s)# and #jobs all would be good. Under the bigger tags you will need to repost to stay out there. Of course the biggest free network you have access to is your companies employees, friends and families using them for referrals and outreach will be your best sources of good candidates (think social media). Alternatively you could research potential candidates by looking up resumes on Indeed resume search and contact them for free.

Also the applicant tracking systems like the Resumator and Smart Recruiters both have free job boards they syndicate to, an example list is below and linked. You might check some of them out. Although I suspect many of them will charge employers for direct postings.

Some employers have a bulletin board that employees can post items of interest like vacation post cards, art and such. Often these are not policed and employers would only take down material if it was inflammatory or in violation of a policy. That being said, most employment attorneys would say that employers should prevent employees from posting personal items up there because once you start its hard to defend making editorial decisions of what is up there. For example if you let employee X post about their side business or school bake sale, its difficult (and maybe an unfair labor practice) to prevent an employee from posting about their own union organizing event.

The central point is that when you let employees post personal items on a bulletin board you need to be prepared to accept material you may not like. In other words be consistent and enforce the rules you establish equally.

I received an inquiry on LinkedIn and was happy with my response and thought it worthy of paraphrasing and posting here.

Dear Eric:

I was recently searching Portland for HR professionals and I came across your name. I am thinking of changing careers and getting my PHR certification (sic). I was really impressed by how much you have already accomplished in your field. I was wondering what advice you might be able to offer on getting started in the field of human resources in today’s economy.

Portland can be a really tough job market for everybody, including recent new graduates, but there are a lot of opportunities. They recently raised the requirements to get the Professional in Human Resources certificate from the HR Certification Institute and I think you either need college HR course work or 2-5 years’ experience. Getting a few years work experience is really the best method of qualifying and passing. If you end up taking the test I’ve got some good pointers, but I would not rush into it.

As far as building knowledge outside of direct experience, go sign up on the email lists for all the Portland and Vancouver employment law firms and HR consultants (e.g. Stoel Rives, Xenium etc). Then you get great legal updates and offers to go to great events (which mean networking!).

You should also join the Portland HR Management Association and Society for Human Resource Management. Membership gets you really good networking, access to interest groups and events. They have great groups including an active search group for job seekers you can attend. The mentor program is really amazing too if you can get in.

I would also be introspective and think about what areas of HR you want to develop towards. ie are you interested in training and development? benefits? A little bit of everything like a generalist? Knowing where you want to be will help plan and gain the requisite experience.

A good back door to get into many HR positions is to find an entry level job within the company you want to be employed and work towards getting promoted into the HR department. Proving yourself in another job is a good opportunity to make you a strong internal candidate to an HR position.

The other advice is to start looking for some temporary HR clerical or entry jobs. The employment department job seeker services are decent too.

If you just want to beef up your Resume/CV try this book. The author writes for lawyers but his perceptions and style guides will completely revamp your resume and documents (and yes I realize I have not made these type of style/format improvements to my blog…).

Good luck and remember that often when it comes to the job search, networking really is your best bet. One final piece of advice for your specific case would be too come up with some really good language/copy for cover letters that explains why you want to switch to the HR career.